


milk snake

by zechariahfour (sodas)



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 14:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17551832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodas/pseuds/zechariahfour
Summary: Her eyes, ever dolorous, search all across his face. Her eyes are 10PM—still before midnight, velvet, with no threat of floodlight. She is the absolute safety of cool-hued darkness. “What is it? What happened to you?” And he knows he doesn’t deserve that safety, and he knows his own selfishness. She looks at his face and worries, even when he holds, in him, the last dregs of his father’s blood. It curdles whatever she has tried to give him. What happened to him, he wonders, just the same as she does.--Lee Yut Lung and a mother who survived.





	milk snake

**Author's Note:**

>   
> [GOOD POINT!!!!!!!](http://misterpoofofficial.tumblr.com/post/182064685998/still-wondering-why-there-arent-any-fics-where) let's do this! 
> 
> this will cover some tracks of canon but will heavily diverge (in more ways than, and partly because of, yut lung's mother having survived). character & relationship/pairing tags will be updated with time. content tags as well, if need be. 
> 
> thank you!!

It’s four in the morning when Yut Lung slithers into his bedroom. He is, indeed, just the quietest rustle, like a snake’s scales over smooth wood. He has left her not too long ago, although he saw her to bed closer to midnight. But he stayed to tidy her apartment, just as a weakling’s gift to her, and he likes to watch her at rest besides. It’s four in the morning—he’s left her and now he’s where he must call home. They never notice. They would have said something by now, if they glimpsed him out of order.

\--

When the world looks at Lee Hua Lung, they see the youngest brother. What the world sees is important. What does this mean for Hua Lung? Well, five men in front of him—five men whose scope of power is beyond him. Certainly, the Lee family carries only a fraction of the world in its palm, but Hua Lung carries only a fraction of _that_.  Would you blame a man for being bitter? The last of six with the littlest allotted to him. He didn’t ask to be the outermost ring in the tree. He didn’t ask to be less deserving than the rest.

But the head count changes when a slender boy in silk glides through the Lee family halls. The boy resides in one of the smaller Lee houses, attended to by servants who won’t pry. Nobody asks who the boy is, and in turn, the boy is nobody. But Hua Lung counts him. Hua Lung fervently counts him, clinging to this larger sum, this one meager tally. A seventh brother, overshadowed by design. “Keep him in line,” said the eldest Lee. It’s power, and it’s precious to him. He may have only a taste of what his brothers wield, but, if nothing else, Hua Lung holds the whole of his secret younger brother in his palm.

He probably doesn’t realize his own abstract envy, but he’s had the thought more than once: could it be nice, to be a secret? To move about in shadow, rather than what slivers of spotlight your betters divvy up for you? Little brother shouldn’t make such a dismal face when he thinks no one is looking. Little brother doesn’t know how good he has it.

Exhibited this morning: Yut Lung’s lavish lifestyle, where he pays little mind to anything unless he’s bullied into it. It’s for Yut Lung’s sake that Hua Lung takes a firm hand to him, or else their older brothers would be unhappy with a leech on the family’s vein. Hua Lung has been waiting in the sitting room since eleven o’clock. It’s now closer to eleven thirty.

Yut Lung arrives. He’s trying to look like he didn’t just wrench himself out of bed and into some clothing. “My brother,” he says in a breath, bewildered.

Hua Lung feels the muscles in his face start to relax. He doesn’t mean for that happen. Yut Lung doesn’t indicate that he noticed any change, so Hua Lung tightens his jaw and his brow again. “It took you some time to receive me,” he says, a thin danger. Yut Lung’s complexion is already waxy with weariness, but he pales. Hua Lung has hurt him. That’s nice. Now Hua Lung smiles a magnanimous smile. “But I don’t want you to think that what I’ve come to tell you is a punishment. It had already been decided…”

There it is. That dismal face. Just a bit—only there at one corner of Yut Lung’s mouth, the tension of one muscle at his eye. ‘Doesn’t he know I’m watching?’ thinks Hua Lung, and he tilts his head and his smile to the left.

“By our eldest brother, of course,” explains Hua Lung.

Yut Lung lowers his eyes out of respect, and inclines his head in deference. “Of course,” he says. “And I wouldn’t deny my brothers.”

It’s sweet. It has to _mean_ something, that Yut Lung includes him. “Well, it’s unsavory,” he tells Yut Lung, like he could sympathize, “but it’s important work, as always.”

“As always,” agrees Yut Lung. His head is still dipped. Hua Lung sees, in him, the most beautiful bowing of any crane.

“Look at me, brother,” he instructs. Yut Lung does, and Hua Lung explains who his younger brother, this loveliest of shadows, will seduce and murder over the coming week.

\--

This maid, Lim Lim, has tiny hands. They’re also thin, so they feel sharp; what’s more, they’re always cold. She’s tender when she does his hair and when she paints his face, every time. She has never not been tender with him. But her tiny hands are sharp and cold, and they prepare a breathtaking beauty. Yut Lung hates her fiercely. "You always make me look so pretty," he says. "Really pretty. More than I could ever be just by myself."

Lim Lim’s hands stop moving. He has hurt her. That's nice. She resumes her braiding of his hair, and she says softly—she's trusting him when she confesses this. "Young master, I am so sorry."

He wonders over what exactly. That he's beautiful? That she makes him as beautiful as he needs to be for his body to be harmed? Oh, so she must know. Perhaps she learned when she laundered his silks, or perhaps when she helped to wash his hair and saw the wanton bruises on his shoulders. He smiles at her. He's good at that, so good that it curves, just as silken, into his voice. "I forgive you."

But, you know, she never begged his pardon.

\--

Yut Lung finishes his assignment well before his deadline: he wanted to get it over with, so he got it over with. Three days after he meets his mark, they lie in bed together. Or, to be frank, Yut Lung is lying next to a dead man. Presently the corpse has lost the bulk of its warmth, while the bulk of the body sags where it has died. The body is naked, blotched, and humiliated. It’s disgusting to lie with, but Yut Lung is all of those things, too. He feels this bed is where he’s meant to be.

He gets up a little while later. His kill must be attended to, and he isn’t allowed the privilege of going with it.

\--

“Pitiable,” says Hua Lung. The two youngest brothers are alone together after Yut Lung has reported on his murderous success, and Hua Lung is stroking Yut Lung’s hair as if he is a child. “It must be hard for you.” Yut Lung doesn’t shake his head to deny it, and he doesn’t turn his face away to confirm it.

Later, Hua Lung sits like a lord at Yut Lung’s desk, which for the evening is his own. He pulls a sealed manila envelope from his briefcase and tosses it onto the desk with a prideful flick of his wrist. (His wrist is always prideful.) “Sorry about this,” he says. “More work.” He pauses and makes a face like he cares about that. Then he rises and rounds the desk. He touches Yut Lung’s waist while he passes him. “Nothing unsavory, this time,” he murmurs, and his fingers drag across the silk of Yut Lung’s changshan, deft over the raise of Yut Lung’s hip bone. He leaves without confirming that Yut Lung agrees to the assignment. Why would he wait for that? Yut Lung wouldn’t deny his brothers.

Yut Lung listens to the door close behind Hua Lung. He stays where he is, standing before the desk in subservient audience. He stays where he is, waiting for Hua Lung to leave the house. He stays where he is for a long while, until there are pins and needles in his legs, and until after that, when they feel stiff and calcified.  Then he sits down at the desk. He’s glad he waited; Hua Lung’s warmth is gone from the chair.

The envelope has this and that, articles and printouts and transcribed conversations… whatever information Yut Lung’s brothers have decided he needs for the task. Yut Lung glances over it, skimming each page—doctors, scientists, secrets— _chemical compounds_ , and Yut Lung sees why he was chosen—and then he looks at the airline ticket included with it all. Los Angeles, California, in just two days. Not much time to prepare, he thinks wryly. Then he bites down on the inside of his cheek. If he’s going to take care of this, it needs to be immediately.

Wu isn’t a chauffeur, but Yut Lung calls Wu to drive him.

\--

Yut Lung unlocks the door, slips inside on lightest feet, and shuts the door gently behind him. It bothers him that he enters her home like this—sneaking, a crook. But he doesn’t know any other way. She has the television on, and she’s quiet in front of it. When he tiptoes—it’s awful of him!—he can see the back of her head while she sits on the couch. She has channel 24 on, watching something in Chinese, although he’s worked with her on learning English over the years. She confessed to him once that trying to learn it makes her feel old and stupid, and he wondered what she meant, since she hasn’t gotten the opportunity to be old at all. Then he realized: she feels it’s too late for her to become anything other than what she is. He made sure not to tell her that he understood that.

He glimpses her profile before she sees him. She has a familiar nose, a familiar mouth, and dolorous eyes. Is he capable of looking so sad and tired? When he reaches his thirties, will he have the same tension at his cheekbone? _Will_ he reach his thirties?

She spots him, then, and faces him. Her mouth rounds into surprise. “You said you couldn’t come tonight,” she says in the most beautiful voice in the world. It has the small, quick quality of a hummingbird’s wing.

“I know,” says Yut Lung. He goes to her and sits beside her. She tucks some hair behind her ear, and then tucks some behind his. They take each other’s hands. “But I had to come. To tell you…”

Her eyes, ever dolorous, search all across his face. Her eyes are 10PM—still before midnight, velvet, with no threat of floodlight. She is the absolute safety of cool-hued darkness. “What is it? What happened to you?”

And he knows he doesn’t deserve that safety, and he knows his own selfishness. She looks at his face and worries, even when he holds, in him, the last dregs of his father’s blood. It curdles whatever she has tried to give him. What happened to him, he wonders, just the same as she does. She has no idea she’s touching a murderer whose body was pinned beneath a gasping man’s just earlier today. But he knows his own selfishness. He shakes his head: _nothing happened to me._ “We’re going on vacation,” he says lightly, squeezing her hands. “To California. Would you like that, Mom?”


End file.
